


thirstytired

by nebulia



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Aging, Angst, M/M, Sad, Unhappy Ending, ghost story, totally unhappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-14
Updated: 2012-07-14
Packaged: 2017-11-09 22:22:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/459129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulia/pseuds/nebulia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[I wish--] Doumeki is so, so thirsty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	thirstytired

**Author's Note:**

> First published at livejournal July 26, 2008.
> 
> Inspired, and written to Vienna Teng's "Drought" on repeat.

  


thirstytired

\--

_Summer move forward and stitch me the fabric of fall  
Wrap life in the brilliance of death to humble us all_

_\--_

_Let winterlight come  
And spread your white sheets over my empty house_

\--

"Going home, Detective?"

"Yeah," Doumeki says.

\--

The shrine is closed and silent when he gets home, but as soon as he pushes open the gate Watanuki's at his side.

"You look bad."

"Tired. Thirsty."

Watanuki stops, looks at him. "Take a day off. Call in sick. I don't know the last time you've had a day off."

"I'm good. They need me."

"Don't be so conceited," Watanuki says, but he knows it's true. He reaches over to grab the broom leaning against a nearby tree. "Here, you sweep and I'll coo—" his hand falls through the broom.

"Twelve years, Watanuki." Doumeki takes off his coat, takes the cartridge out of his gun. His voice is too vulnerable, too emotional.

"I know," Watanuki says. "I know. I just—"

"Forget."

"Yeah."

\--

"You have a wish," Yuuko says eleven years ago. She cut her hair, so it only falls to mid-back. Doumeki is ninety-eight percent certain that that was a price of a wish of her own, and he's ninety-nine percent certain he knows what that wish was, but he doesn't know how Yuuko managed to get a wish of her own granted.

Watanuki is reveling in the illusion, priest robes draping beautifully, hands shaking as they touch cooking supplies. His eyes are wide and wanting and happy.

"I want to touch him."

Yuuko smiles but it's more like a sob. "You can't pay that price, Shizuka."

"I know."  And he did, really he did—something he wanted so badly can't be something he could possibly afford.

"Only for a few hours, during the day," she says. "Only with the illusion."

Her hands reach out, fingers just brushing his arm, and then fall to her lap. "I'm sorry," she says, a whisper out of her mouth if he's ever heard one.

"I know," he says. "I know."

\--

One kiss, light and feathery and nervous and perfect, hands grasping for shoulders and hips and hair and face, not sure where to touch.

Just one. A long one, but just one.

\--

Doumeki cooks instant ramen for dinner—Watanuki has beaten the basics of cooking into his head in twelve years of shouting and waving of arms and the occasion astral telekinesis when the sun is in alignment or something—but he's too tired to do that.

He's thirsty. So, so thirsty and nothing can get rid of it.

He eats half of the ramen and throws it away.

"You'll kill yourself," Watanuki says irritably. "And then where will I be?"

"Alone," Doumeki says. "I won't kill myself."

"You need sleep," Watanuki says, and settles himself on the air right next to Doumeki on the double futon, so it looks like he's sitting on it. "I'm not moving from this spot all night, and you're going to call in sick tomorrow, and then you'll sleep for another three hours. All right?" Watanuki cannot sleep. That's just how it is.

Doumeki lies down. "Fine." He doesn't argue as much anymore. He's too tired.

Maybe he needs more sleep.

\--

Watanuki runs the shrine. He cannot leave it—the wards there keep him safe, for he's a powerful ghost, so powerful the demons want him. For six hours a day he can maintain the illusion of a priest, one he adjusts for age each year. He looks like Doumeki. In the illusion, he can lift small things, brush fingers comfortingly across people's shoulders, shake a hand or two.

Doumeki paid a high price for that illusion. Watanuki can't know.

There's a reason he's a detective.

\--

Watanuki will always look eighteen and three months and ten days and seven hours and twenty-two minutes and thirteen seconds.

Doumeki is thirty now.

Watanuki says on April 1st the year Doumeki turns thirty, "I feel like an old man. My chest hurts." He sets a hand on the offending chest, and his fingers sink into it just slightly, and then stop. He looks down at the hand, and pulls it out of his skin.

"I wish—" he says, and stops.

\--

He works in the homicide department, catching the hardest ones to catch, the most dangerous criminals, the ones that people think only exist in horror manga until they hear about it on the news. The really bad guys. That's how he always puts it when he meets Kohane-chan's children, five and three.

Kohane-chan's eyes follow Watanuki's trail, a little off, but she knows he's there.

She can't see him though. Can't hear him ask her how she is every time she visits, as if perhaps just maybe something has changed.

No one can see him. Except Doumeki and Yuuko.

"It's your eye," Yuuko says.

That was the best gift he'd ever given anyone, the smallest price he'd ever paid.

\--

_Bang._

He's as good with a gun as he is with a bow and arrow. His aim is perfect, his reflexes are fast, and he knows how to shoot without killing. It makes him the top detective in his department, one of the best detectives in Tokyo.

"Detective?"

Vice-Captain Shirou has obviously been searching for him; he looks a bit frantic and it looks like he's been running his hands through his hair, a nervous habit. "Have you been here this whole time? We've needed you."

"Sorry."

He says no more than that.

Shirou sighs. "I'm sorry, Detective, but there's a new case."

_Bang._

"Detective, are you all right?"

"I'm…tired." It's the only thing he can seem to think of. Tired. He's more thirsty than tired, but he doubts that that would make much sense.

Shirou tips his head. "Relationship problems?"

They all know he goes home to someone, because thats how coworkers are. The whole office, Doumeki knows, has some sort of pool on whom his significant other is. There's a lot of money on how old he or she is, on if she or he is a she or a he, on how much money she or he has.

Significant other is really the only term for it, though, in Doumeki's case.

"Something like that," he says, and his fingers itch for Watanuki's skin.

\--

Doumeki was eighteen and four months and eight days and five hours and thirty-eight minutes and five seconds when he kissed Watanuki.

(Watanuki was eighteen and three months and ten days and seven hours and three minutes and fifty-six seconds.)

They were sitting in his apartment, eating dinner. Or they had been, but now they were sitting on the floor next to each other, Doumeki in seiza, Watanuki with his feet crossed, talking about nothing (civilly, for once) and then they were looking at each other and then it was slow and awkward and leaning forward and their lips brushed, by accident almost first and Doumeki touched Watanuki's hair and it deepened a little, and then they were kissing, really kissing, and holding hands and arms and hair and it was the best five minutes of Doumeki's life, because Watanuki pulled away and their foreheads were touching and they were both smiling— _Watanuki was smiling at him_ —and they scooched closer together so that they were touching and sitting on the floor, hands entwined.

And then the window behind them shattered.

\--

There's a period of eight hours after that first (only) kiss that Doumeki isn't aware of, except he remembers Watanuki, his body crumpling into Doumeki's arms, remembers the longbow falling to the ground, string snapping hard enough to leave a scar on Doumeki's shin that he still has, remembers blurry eyes and hot salt running down his face and blood, so much blood and then he wakes up in Yuuko's shop, and she is crying too.

\--

"You look better," Watanuki says in the morning. It's nearly noon, and Watanuki is in his illusion so he can cook, and it's so _weird_ seeing another Doumeki bustle around with movements like Watanuki's.

"I made breakfast for you," he said. "I'm glad you called in sick."

Doumeki manages to eat one full helping of rice and a two cups of tea and a whole bowl of miso and an onigiri and Watanuki declares himself satisfied, because even though it's only about a third of what Doumeki once ate, it's a hell of a lot more than he seems to eat on a regular basis now.

"Thank you," he says, and goes to stand, handing Watanuki the teacup.

The skin of the illusion is soft like water, with hints of calluses, just barely. Not perfect, of course.

And nothing like Watanuki's skin.

\--

"It had to happen," Yuuko says. Her voice is bitter.

"I know," Watanuki says.

He has been dead two days. This morning, Doumeki came down the stairs and Yuuko is in a kimono that shows no thigh and no cleavage and her hair is short.

And she is speaking to Watanuki.

He jerks around the corner at those two words. "Wata—"

And there he is, still and just barely transparent and floating an inch above the ground.

"Oh," Doumeki says. "Oh, I thought—I— _Watanuki—"_

And Watanuki moves forward, walks like anyone else only fast and urgent and his arms go out and his face goes to bury itself in Doumeki's neck and all that happens is Doumeki suddenly is attacked by a _whoosh_ of cold air, and Watanuki is behind him.

Yuuko has never looked so helpless.

\--

He has nightmares, at least two or three times a week.

Some of them are because of his job, but he knows most are of Watanuki. He wakes up with the name silent and begging on his lips, and when he opens his eyes, Watanuki is curled on the futon next to him.

"I tried to wake you," Watanuki says. "But you weren't answering my calls and I can't _touch_ —"

"I'm used to them now."

"But you shouldn't be."

\--

Within two months Watanuki is aching to touch things.

"I wish—" he begins, and then starts again, "I wish I could touch things."

 _I wish I could touch you,_ Doumeki does not say, but this is a wish he might be able to grant.

\--

"It will take several months to make it," she says, "and so your power will drain away slowly, all right?"

"I understand," he says, and gives her his grandfather's bow.

\--

Doumeki Haruka has never appeared in his dreams—well, not like he appears— _appeared_ —to Watanuki—but he does now.

"All of it. For that."

"Are you angry?"

Haruka takes a long drag on his cigarette. "No."

"I love him. I always will."

Haruka smiles a little. "It is a good price, then."

\--

He can't regret it. Because even if Doumeki can never, ever touch Watanuki, not really, Watanuki can touch things, and it's okay.

And he's selfish enough—for a much higher price Yuuko could have managed a form that was corporeal _and_ Watanuki whenever and for as long as Watanuki wished it so, but Doumeki wanted Watanuki near him until he died.

 _Selfish,_ something whispers.

That will always eat at him, a little.

\--

"I'm getting complacent," Watanuki says slowly, that night at dinner.

Doumeki stirs the udon.

"I wish I could touch things as me. All the time. I know I should only take what I can get, but—"

"I know."

He should, too. He should be grateful that to the rest of the world, Watanuki has been dead twelve years, but to Doumeki, Watanuki is still here.

Watanuki curls on the sofa next to Doumeki. He has gotten good at sitting on the same plane as the sofa, so it actually looks like he's sitting.

They are almost touching, shoulders barely an inch apart.

 _I want you so badly,_ Doumeki doesn’t say. _I want to touch your wrist, your fingernails, anything. I want to lean my head on your shoulder._

There's longing in Watanuki's eyes.

\--

Doumeki has not had much of a sex drive in a long time. At first it was hard and he got very good at relieving himself quickly in the shower and ignoring it ninety percent of the time, and then it just faded away.

It was never so much a sex drive anyway as it was a Watanuki drive, which perhaps was what made it so hard, because it was just—it wasn't even sex he wanted. It was just—

Sometimes he reaches out to take his hand and wraps his fingers around the nonexistent palm and squeezes and feels the cold air and they know that they are holding hands, but it is so far from holding hands that—

He takes what he can get.

\--

He wakes up with Watanuki's name on his lips, for real this time, loudly.

"You need another day off," Watanuki says.

The last one was bad enough.

He is so, so thirsty.

"No," he says. "I don't."

Watanuki opens his mouth to argue and Doumeki places his hand over the transparent lips. " _Please,"_ he says, hoarse.

Watanuki lies down and Doumeki follows and they look at each other.

"I'm tired, too," Watanuki whispers. "So tired."

Doumeki closes his eyes and feels coolness on his mouth, returns the ghost of a kiss with one of his own.

_I wish—_

_\--_

_And the taste of dried-up hopes in my mouth  
And the landscape of merry and desperate drought  
Once I knew myself  
And with knowing came love_

\--

end  


**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [thirstytired (a remix from the other side)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/459236) by [andreaphobia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/andreaphobia/pseuds/andreaphobia)




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